I'm not sure you all realize what a 400-500g system really costs to put in from scratch ... Go take a look at the 410g build the forum member in SW Fl has done. He talked about all the equipment he purchased to set this system up from scratch. Just do a Google search and add uplp ll the costs ... That's for starters. He changes out 90 gals/month in water changes so he needs to make over 1,000 gals of salt water/yr, then add in food & sups. Now you're ready to add animals and while you can add 100 or so 1" frags you usually put in a lot of mother colonies since you have the space ... Andndon't discount things like the extr monthly electric bills associated with running a big system and a backup generator and a chiller ...
When all is said and done I think you'd be surprised at the monthly operating costs of these types of systems on top of the one time expense to set it up ....
Back in 2005 I purchased a 35' flybridge sport fishing boat for $150,000. Now while that may not seem like an excessively large amount of money it's the monthly ops costs you need to worry about, 500/ month dock fee, 2,500/year insurance, 3,000-5,000/yr in maintenance if there we no major issues ... Oh, and the boat had a 400 gal fuel tank at $3.10/gal for desiel ..... And that's not even spending one penny yet on fishing expenses which was the sole purpose of the boat ....
Bottom line, can you do a large tank with household incomes around 80,000-100,000k? Probably but you're asking for trouble in the long run ... One of the forum members building one of these said he was a hedge fund mgr .... He probably doesn't make $80k a year ....
